By Aaron Kohler
I have a tip that may help your readers avoid some of the frustration a friend and I went through recently.
My friend bought a small benchtop CNC mill several years ago and has had problems with it ever since. The machine would fault out – randomly at first, but the faults increased until it happened almost every time he tried to run a program.
After a lot of phone calls, Scott at Machine Tool Camp was able to give us the answer we were looking for. He mentioned that DC motors were famous for creating electrical noise and he suggested running the mill with the spindle off to check for noise problems. It ran fine, with no faults! Thanks Scott!
A simple fix was all that was needed to get us up and running. We replaced some cables with higher quality shielded cables and made sure the leads in the motor were kept as short as possible. If you are experiencing unexplained, random troubles with your DC powered machine, take a look at electrical noise.
Thanks Aaron. Your subscription has been extended one issue!